The importance of being Sabbir Rahman

Sabbir Rahman is at a delicate point in his career. He has been embroiled in off-field trouble, and has to pay an unprecedentedly high fine for what the BCB has described as a "serious disciplinary breach". The amount of money involved would make anyone's head spin, let alone that of one as young as Sabbir.

The next few months could define which way he heads in international cricket. He needs to repair his reputation after this transgression, and the best way would be to quickly revert to doing what he knows best: batting with a free mind.

The predominantly aggressive mindset with which Sabbir approaches every kind of cricket, and which has its roots in his origins as a T20 specialist, has become representative of a shift in the mentality of Bangladesh batsmen at large.

When Indian satellite-television channels started to become available in Bangladesh in the early 1990s, the current lot of cricketers in the country picked up most of what they know by watching matches telecast from around the world. But though the likes of Sanath Jayasuriya, Virender Sehwag, and now David Warner, have been watched keenly, very few Bangladesh batsmen have been able to bat aggressively like those players in a sustained fashion.

Mohammad Ashraful and Aftab Ahmed were the first to bat at higher speeds against quality bowling but both lacked consistency. Tamim Iqbal started off as a bit of a dasher but modified his game to suit the wider needs of international cricket. And Shakib Al Hasan's batting ability seems to have shrunk due to his over-exposure to T20.

Sabbir's approach has provided a more localised blueprint of the Sehwag and Warner template. He differs from some of the best Bangladeshi batsmen in that he had his aggressive mindset before he made it to international cricket.

With no chairs in sight, we plonk ourselves down on the ground behind where the Rajshahi Kings players have placed their bags. Space is at a premium at the small Academy ground in Mirpur, with three teams training on the day, one on which no BPL games are due to be played. Sabbir speaks with the distinct Rajshahi cadence and gives off a smile every once in a while.

At the crease, he doesn't move as the bowler approaches, and only reacts according to the length. He brings his bat down in a flash to play the square-cut. When pulling the ball, he unwinds fast from his stance into a fiery shot, not always lifting his front leg for balance. His driving in the arc from in front of point to midwicket is also full of simplicity. There is no big backlift or flourish. See ball, hit ball.

He only recently made his maiden T20 century, a 61-ball 122 with nine sixes. Rajshahi couldn't beat Barisal Bulls in the match but the innings was a standout for its sheer quality of clean hitting. It followed an assured Test debut against England, in which Sabbir nearly won Bangladesh the match with a fighting half-century. Earlier in the year, he had produced a 54-ball 80 that gave Bangladesh their first T20 win over Sri Lanka.

He says that his fondness for big hitting developed at an early age, as far back as 1996, when a 37-ball century in Nairobi took the world by storm.

"Since I followed Shahid Afridi in those days, I was attracted to big hitting," Sabbir said. "Afridi had made that century, which made me think that even I should start hitting like him. But the problem was, I couldn't hit the ball too far. My friends didn't give me batting in tennis-ball cricket. The madness started within: how can I become a big-hitter?"

He found the solution quickly enough. "I used to hang the ball in a sock and practise the big hitting at home. In school once, I ended up hitting six sixes. My confidence started building from that point."

Growing up in cricket-mad Rajshahi, 250km northwest of Dhaka, Sabbir followed the well-trodden path of cricketers in the region, joining a cricket academy. He started at the Rashid Bari camp, from where he went to the Al-Rashid Cricket Academy, and then to the North Bengal Cricket Academy, a well-known finishing school that had a team in the Dhaka Second Division Cricket League.

His coach at the time, Jamilur Rahman Saad, ferried him between cricket grounds during the Dhaka Premier League season as a substitute fielder. Teams that saw him repeatedly would complain to the match referee, but he mostly got away with it.

When he was still studying at the Rajshahi Bholanath BB Hindu Academy, he played in the Dhaka Premier League for the first time, for Young Pegasus, a club that has been home to many Rajshahi players, among them Farhad Reza and Junaid Siddique.

Sabbir's progress wasn't easy. He faced opposition at home, especially considering his older brother had joined the police force, which took him away from the family for long periods. Cricket in Bangladesh was big in the mid-2000s but it still sounded too adventurous a career path for a boy from a middle-class family that missed their oldest son.

Sabbir was such an energetic kid that his coaches couldn't stop him from keeping wicket and bowling pace and offspin, which he did for months before settling on legspin and batting. He rose through the age-group ranks quickly and in 2010 gave a first glimpse of his hitting ability in that year's Under-19 World Cup, batting at a 100-plus strike rate in six innings. A few months later his unbeaten 18-ball 33 helped Bangladesh win their first ever gold medal in the Asian Games, an innings that he called a career breakthrough.

When, three years later, Sabbir was dropped after three T20s for Bangladesh, it led to introspection and a realisation of what he specifically needed to do to be a consistent international cricketer. "Mashrafe bhai told me to face a lot of balls in the nets as long as I am playing cricket," he says. "So in the last three years I have tried to face at least 500 to 700 balls per day, however I can."

This boost in his training volume paid dividends for Sabbir, who became an ODI and T20 regular from the end of 2014, and against England last October he was an assured presence in his debut Test series.

Sabbir says that the base of his confidence comes from T20. This is an attitude new to Bangladesh cricket, where hitting out like he does is considered sacrilege. You can hit a six but you cannot hit the next ball for one as well. If you defend it instead, your club officials and coach will appreciate your maturity; if you do it in front of a packed stadium, there will be long applause.

The way Sabbir sees it, each player has a favourite format and his happens to be T20. It helps that he has found a bridge between his T20 outlook and how he should bat in Tests.

"The biggest thing for a player is his mentality and how it builds his confidence. It is very important to believe in yourself. I always have extra confidence when I am playing T20s because I like it.

"I have only recently found some runs in first-class cricket because I changed my mentality when batting in this format. I think a batsman should play more shots in Tests; there are simply more opportunities to score with the field settings. A batsman can think of defending or leaving the ball, but I think a batsman should have the same mentality in all three formats.

"I got out of the two Tests with confidence. I played my way. I left the ball, and I also played the shots."

He says that it is important for him to back his methods, even if it raises questions regularly. "Even my friends sometimes ask me why I got out for a duck. 'Why did you go for an early big hit?' they ask me sometimes.

"But if I am confident, I can get over the bad innings and have the confidence to score a hundred in the next game. A batsman who works really hard has that inner confidence and knows his game - he will always be in the right frame of mind," he said.

The Sabbir way has influenced younger players. He has showed in the last two years that it is not just cool to play the way he does but useful too. Even older batsmen, like Shahriar Nafees and Mominul Haque, say that Sabbir's approach has encouraged them to bat differently in T20. While they haven't exactly tried to imitate him, both those players have looked more proactive in this year's BPL. Having realised a while ago that they needed to do well in T20 to sustain themselves in the game at large, it is only now that they have figured out what will work.

"There are things that I have picked up from Sabbir, who is an amazing hitter of the ball. But I cannot just start hitting sixes from the first or second ball like him," said Nafees. "He is super-fit.

"I think I have more understanding of the format, and it is crucial to bat according to the situation."

"I haven't had to make too many changes to my technique," Mominul, who had a strike rate of 118.13 in nine innings as Rajshahi's opener, said. "It is all in the mentality, the belief. I think it has a lot to do with changing the mood of my batting. I have been playing Tests for the last two years, so it was always tough to readjust to T20s.

"I will take this confidence into international cricket."

Nafees made some fundamental changes, which included his bat weight. He has batted in the BPL with one that weighed 2.10 pounds, while he previous played with a 2.7-pound bat. He also worked on his bat-swing during the off season so as to be able to hit sixes with more ease. Nafees has had success in the BPL before - he struck his maiden century in the 2013 tournament - but the freedom with which he has batted this time was plain to see. The ten sixes he has hit in this year's tournament have more than doubled his overall T20 sixes tally.

The change of approach involved putting effort into becoming leaner, and spending more hours in the gym than before. "At the start of my career, all the focus was on Tests and ODIs but now T20 gives you a lot of exposure," Nafees said. "I think the difference this year has been my fitness. I feel a lot lighter on my feet, so my agility has improved and I feel more strength overall. This power game is now the standard in international cricket."

Sabbir has only just started out in international cricket and hasn't yet had the inevitable first bad season. Chinks in his make-up will probably be exposed soon enough by the teams he comes up against, but he knows that if he remains confident in being able to carry out his method day in day out, he will be a consistent international batsman.

He also won't want a pile-up of off-field controversies early in his career, and will do well to understand the responsibilities that come with being an international cricketer and, consequently, role model. If he lets incidents like the recent disciplinary breach dent his impact as a batsman, Sabbir stands in danger of losing the most beautiful thing about his game - the mental clarity with which he bats.